Chapter 27

As I'd suspected, I wasn't quite the only guest in the lodge. When I walked into the restaurant—they called it the "dining hall," I guess to make the place seem a little more lodge-y—a slightly overweight middle-aged woman was already ensconced at one table. She looked up as I entered, we nodded sociably at each other, and she glanced away again. Clearly not interested in any interaction. Suited me fine, neither was I.

And later on, as I was finishing up, a young couple came in, all wrapped up in each other. Honeymooners, maybe. I wondered idly if they'd hoped for an outdoor frolic in the snow to celebrate their wedding only to find they'd mistimed it. If so they didn't seem overly concerned about it, there was lots of touchy-feely byplay across the table as they ordered their own breakfast and they seemed happy as clams.

Now where did that phrase come from, I wondered. Were clams really happy? Whether they were or not, how would anybody know? Why not happy as, oh, say a meadowlark? I didn't know anything about the emotional state of meadowlarks either, it was probably the same as humans, some were and some weren't, but the birds sure did seem happy as they sang and flitted around. Clams, in contrast, just sort of dug themselves in on the beach and lay in their little trenches beneath the sand, breathing through airholes. How could that make them all that happy?

It was time to leave when my mind was drifting to that sort of trivial non sequitor. Breakfast had been as good as the desk clerk had advertised, I'd had an omelet, three very tasty sausage links, toast and finished most of a short stack of pancakes, and I was definitely sated for the moment. I thanked the lone waitress, tipped her well and headed back upstairs.

To my mild surprise the room had already been made up when I got back, even though it was barely past eight. Apparently housekeeping got in early and wanted to get the chores finished so they could get back home. I supposed it made sense, everybody's got things to do of a Saturday, and the place was empty enough that they could be through in an hour or so provided the guests were obliging enough not to sleep in. And it was fine with me; I had an agenda for the day and now wouldn't be interrupted.

I opened the drapes to a lovely scene of the fall countryside. The leaves had pretty well finished their colorful show and fallen, but it was still a nice view. Not far away I could see the cleared ski runs and the lifts that would haul skiers to the top; it would really look spectacular with a thick layer of snow. Half-hidden were the machines they'd roll out to supplement what nature provided when the time came.

Then I broke out the laptop, set it up on the table by the window, plugged it in to avoid draining the battery, and got to work. The lodge had wi-fi, which seems ubiquitous these days, though I had to call down to the desk for an access code. It seemed they didn't want day-trippers sitting around in the lobby and piggybacking on their system. Struck me as a little on the curmudgeonly side, since a few extras wouldn't affect their bill and wouldn't take up enough band-width to make any never-minds, but it wasn't unusual; businesses can get awfully proprietary about allowing only paying customers to use their stuff.

First things first; I went looking for the blueprint of a "printed" gun that some college kid in Texas or somewhere had put up on the Internet. I'd read about it recently, you could actually produce the thing with a special 3D printer and some cheap polymer and it would shoot real bullets.

It proved annoyingly elusive. I found videos showing accelerated-motion images of printers actually making the parts—this was "some assembly required"—and showing the thing actually being fired. Fired repeatedly, I was pleased to see; I'd been concerned that it might be a one-and-done doohickey. Digging out the actual plans, though, was tougher.

Some other sites told me why. Shortly after the kid published it seemed the U.S. State Department made a bunch of noise. State Department? What the hell did they have to do with it? Anyhow, the Department of Defense jumped into the act, too, and the original site got taken down. Apparently the idea of a plastic gun available to any whacko with a little technical know-how scared them blind. The thing would sail right through any metal detector.

Come to think of it, I was glad that Cesar Romero and his pals hadn't gone high-tech.

Still, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. The original site was long gone, but there'd been plenty of downloads to spawn copycats. In particular, a bunch of so-called "survivalist" gun-rights sites picked it up—the thing was called the "Liberator," and they plumped it as the individual's path to protecting himself or herself against "government tyranny." Oh, sure. I had a life-size picture of guys with plastic guns going up against the Army with its rockets and tanks, or even just the cops. Don't tell the nuts that, though; sanity R not us.